The Sandbox Incident
by celrock
Summary: My first AU story. Zack explains about an incident with Tommy's sandbox that ruined his friendship with the Rugrats forever. Parodies what recently took place with me as a staff member at the Internet radio station, 98.6 The Mix. Story is told from Zack's POV.


Author's Note: I do apologize for not releasing any new material for nearly a month now. Between my iPad getting broken back on 9/18, which finally got replaced 2 days ago, and while I still have yet to log into the apps that have associated accounts with them, everything is back on the new iPad, like nothing had ever happened, celebrating my parents birthdays, being busy with school, and the Internet radio incident that this story is a parody of, which we'll get to in a minute, time to release new Fan Fiction stories has just, sadly, been pushed to the back burner. Well hopefully, those days are now behind me, allowing me over the course of this next month, to make up for being absent during much of September. Before we start though, I should warn you, this story will portray beloved characters in a darker light, hince, why I'm classifying this story as an AU story, which is short for alternate universe in Fan Fiction language. I'll explain what parts of the story represent what really went down at the Internet station I was recently fired on back on 9/19/15 at the very end. For now, I hope you enjoy it, or, enjoy it as best as you can anyway.

The Sandbox Incident

Summary: My first AU story. Zack explains about an incident with Tommy's sandbox that ruined his friendship with the Rugrats forever. Parodies what recently took place with me as a staff member at the Internet radio station, 98.6 The Mix. Story is told from Zack's POV.

Disclaimer: I do not own the original Rugrats characters, they're the property of their original creaters. I own Zack and his aunty Celeste, while Peter is owned by TCKing12, and Tom Daniels is owned by LilNate13.

Start of Story

Zack POV

It all happened in the fall during my days as a nearly one-year-old toddler. I myself, along with my friends, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, Kimi, and Dil, all went outside to play in Tommy's backyard, when we noticed something very odd about Tommy's sandbox. For the first time any of us could remember, the sandbox was completely deserted of sand.

"Hey, where did all of the sand go you guys?" Kimi asked upon noticing the empty sandbox.

"I don't know." Tommy replied.

"I bet Angelica had something to do with it." I added.

"Nah, Angelica wouldn't do that to us." Said Kimi.

I just rolled my eyes at the Japanese toddler, not buying her comment. Surely this had to be the act of Angelica, the blond headed four-year-old witch that was always ruining our lives. Maybe she went to preschool for a few hours each day, but when she wasn't at school, she spent her spare time, making our lives miserable. Whether it was breaking our toys or calling us names, like dumb babies, she always found some way to make our day unhappy, and now, for some reason beyond my wrelm of understanding, she decided to ruin our ability to play in the sandbox. This even took me by surprise, as last I knew, Angelica wasn't a fan of playing in the sandbox, so why would she want anything to do with ours?

"But why would Angelica take our sand?" Lil asked.

"Like she needs a reason." Chuckie muttered.

"Well guys, let's not sit here, come on, we've gots to go find some new sand." Said Tommy, as he stood up boldly, his attention directed towards the back door of the house.

"But even if it's true, where are we gonna find any sand?" Chuckie asked.

"Well, there's lots of sand at the beach." I suggested.

"But we're not at the beach." Said Phil.

"Nah, but I'm sure we can find something just as good, come on!" Said Tommy, as he led us back into the house.

Soon, our prayers for sand were answered, when we walked into the living room, to find Angelica's mother Charlotte standing in the doorway of the living room and entry hallway, Angelica next to her, with a huge bag in her hand.

"Mommy, I have enough sand for everybody to make tomorrow's art project at preschool." Said Angelica with a wide grin on her face, as she looked up innocently at her mother, who paused her phone conversation with Jonathan for a moment, to hear what her daughter had to say. Then, she returned to the phone.

"Oh, isn't that cute? Angelica is taking sand to her preschool tomorrow to make sand bottles." Said Charlotte into the phone, as she drug Angelica by the arm and they headed out the front door.

Upon leaving however, she forgot to pick up a bag of groceries she had set down on the living room carpet. Curious, we all went over and eyed the bag with curiosity.

"What are sand bottles?" Kimi asked.

Being the smartest toddler of the bunch, I spoke up and explained it to her.

"Sand bottles are where you take sand and color them with paints or something called food coloring, making them all sorts of different bright colors, like blue, pink, yellow, and so on. Then, you take glass bottles, and scoop the colored sand into the bottles, then close them with a cork, and you've got a nice prettyful piece of decorative art to make a room look nice." I explained.

"But why would Angelica need our sand to do it?" Chuckie asked.

"Because she's Angelica and likes to make our lives miserable, and will do anything to cheat in preschool, just to make her look the bestest, or at least that's what Susie and Peter are always telling me." I replied.

"Well guys, this stuff ought to work." Said Tommy, as I turned and saw the two-year-old purple haired toddler had grabbed at what appeared to be a box of catlitter. He proceeded to open it and show us the catlitter, which did look a lot like sand.

"Uh Tommy, that's not sand, that's catlitter, which I'm assuming was intended for Angelica's cat Fluffy, and being busy with her phone conversation as usual, your aunt Charlotte forgotted to pick it up when she lefted." I said.

"Yeah, but it will do for now until mommy and daddy can get us some new real sand to play with. Come on you guys, help me take this stuff out to the backyard, and fill the sandbox with it." Said Tommy, as we all pitched in, and put our replacement sand into the sandbox.

Well, for a while, our new so called sand, really catlitter, wasn't half bad. It smelled kind of funny, but it was better than nothing, so we all had lots of fun the rest of that afternoon, making sand castles and playing pirates and Desert Explorers. Well soon, it was time for all of us to head home, and a couple of days later, Tommy fell ill with a cold, and from what I hearded from my aunty, their mommy and daddy's car broke down, leaving them without a vehicle for a few days, causing us to not play at Tommy and Dil's house for a little bit. During the course of that next week though, it rained, and by the time we returned, are catlitter sand, was now a bunch of clumps, thanks to the rain storms that hit it over the course of the previous week.

As the days went on once we were allowed to return to playing at Tommy and Dil's house, we dealt with the frustration of our new clumpy sand.

"I don't like this sand Tommy, it doesn't work right." Complained Chuckie.

"Awe come on Chuckie, it's not that bad. At least we can play in the sandbox again, and look at the clumps. They're like little sand castles." Said Tommy.

The conversation went on like that every day for the next couple of weeks. Chuckie would complain on a day-to-day basis, and Tommy would simply reassure us that our new catlitter sand was better than no sand at all.

"Can't you get your mommy and daddy to buy you new regular sand for our sandbox Tommy?" Chuckie asked.

"Uh, I think they're working on it, but for now, at least we've gots this." Said Tommy, as he went back to building a sand castle out of the clumps of litter.

I was getting tired of it. Rather than doing something about the sand situation, Tommy was just sitting around on his lazy bottom, waiting for his mommy and daddy to fix the situation, letting Chuckie's complaints slide, which, I could tell from the looks on Kimi, Phil, Lil and Dil's faces, that even they, too, were getting tired of the constant complaining Chuckie was doing, and more so, Tommy's ignorance of the whole thing, just being glad with what we had, when I had to ask myself, how could anybody possibly like playing with catlitter over regular sand?

Finally, one day, when I was suffering from a case of diapie rash and a new tooth coming in, which hurting teeth and gums always made me cranky, I finally couldn't take it anymore, and decided it was about high time, I spoke up and did something about the situation.

"This sand just doesn't work right Tommy. I can't do nothing with clumpy sand that's spose to be used for Fluffy's poop. When are we gonna get real sand again Tommy? When?" Chuckie asked for the bazillionth time.

I finally stood up from where I was in the sandbox, and got everybody's attention, before starting down the road that would end my friendship with these toddlers forever.

"You know what Chuckie, why don't you just, shut up. It's not like we don't gots any sand to play with, even if it is clumpy. And Tommy, why don't you stop sitting around and do something about it, or are you just as lazy as your mommy and daddy, who don't seem to be doing anything about the situation. You know what? If you're not going to do anything about it, I am. As soon as my aunty takes me to the toy store later on today, I'm gonna see that we get some real sand, and fix this sandbox. It's either we fix this sandbox once and for all, or destroy it. Because I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of Chuckie's constant complaining about this situation, as it's not helping the situation to go away, and it's time something be done about it. It's time, we either fix, or break, this sandbox. Now who's with me?" I asked, now more or less, shouting at the top of my lungs, I was so angry and heated up about this situation.

"Hey! Did it ever occur to you guys that I was sick with a cold and couldn't do nothing about it?" Tommy asked, now shouting.

"That's no excuse. Your brother Dil could have done something about it." I said.

"Dilly don't know any better. He's my brother, it's not his job to fix my sandbox. He's only in charge of making sure the buckets and shovels don't get broked. And if Chuckie wants to complain about the sandbox, then he can, but as owner of this sandbox, I'm sorry Zack, but you are from this moment on, never ever allowed to play in my sandbox ever again. You could have just, ignored Chuckie's complaints, and you could have quietly lefted and played somewhere else, but no! You had to be mean to my bestest friend, and threaten to break my most favoritest outdoor toy in the whole wild world." Yelled Tommy in an angry tone of voice, as he stared angrily at me.

"Well then Mister Pickles, I hope your sandbox rots in Hell, because I'm sick of your attitude and how you're handling this situation. And letting Chuckie complain for nothing all because he's your bestest friend, while I at least attempt to make my voice heard and consider seeing to fixing the situation, as the most I would do if my plan to get sand didn't work, would be to get us all to stop playing in the sandbox no more." I snapped back.

"Well Mister Wehrenberg, your wish of not never playing in my sandbox no more has been granted, cuz you're never allowed to play here again! Now get out!" Tommy snapped, as I started to cry and crawled off to a far corner of the backyard, where I hid behind a bush, continuing to cry quietly into my hands, as the rest of the toddlers calmed down, and went back to their playing in the sandbox.

Then, a real evil idea came to me. I was sick of being treated so unfairly. I was going to get Chuckie set up for being banished from Tommy's sandbox forever, and I had the perfect plan to do it with. Luckily, he had been on some antibiotic as of late, which caused him to have a diarrhea accident upon coming over that morning. When the other toddlers weren't looking, I snuck back inside Tommy's house and upstairs to the bathroom, where I found his poopy shorts and a small clown potty filled with his poop in the bathroom. Then, I saw an empty laundry bag on the doorknob. I reached up, pulled it down, and got to work. I carefully picked up Chuckie's shorts and a wod of poop out of the potty, put them into the bag, and snuck them back downstairs. Then, I waited for the rest of the toddlers to clear out of the area. Once nobody was seen in the backyard, as they were all back inside, playing roll the ball in Tommy and Dil's playpen, I snuck back out into the backyard, and dumped the contents of the laundry bag into the sandbox. Once I was through, for the firstest time in my eleven months of life, I cursed at the top of my lungs, while parading outside the edge of the sandbox.

"This sandbox is a piece of shit!" I yelled over and over again at the top of my lungs, as I paraded around the outside of the sandbox, that was now filled with Chuckie's poop and poopy pants.

The other toddlers must have hearded me, as they came outside, with a very steamed Tommy in the lead, who marched up to me, a very angry look upon the two-year-old's face.

"Get away from my sandbox." Tommy snapped.

"I should get away, why don't you look and see who went potty in here, hmmm?" I said, pointing at Chuckie's poopy pair of shorts that were lying in the middle of the sandbox.

"I went poopy in my pants but it was a accident, and I'd never do it in Tommy's sandbox, never." Said Chuckie from the back of the line.

"Don't lie to me Chuckie, you know you did this, didn't you? Guess you'll have to ban Chuckie from playing in your sandbox too eh Tommy?" I asked.

"No! Chuckie didn't do this. Admit it Zack, your poopy smelling hands prove it. You did this to get Chuckie in trouble, only adding icing to your cake that you already started, because you're never allowed to play in my sandbox again, and I meant it! Is that clear?" Tommy screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Ok ok, I admit it, I did try to set Chuckie up because I'm tired of him getting away with everything." I replied.

"Excuse me but Chuckie had every right to complain. Like I said before, you didn't have to listen to him." Said Tommy.

"Yeah yeah, sure sure, whatever. I'm through with this conversation. Play in your stupid sandbox, see if I care." I said, as I stomped off in anger, disappearing to the opposite side of Tommy and Dil's backyard, hiding in the bushes once again, crying my eyes out.

Not only did I ruin my opportunities to ever play in Tommy's sandbox ever again, but looks like I ruined my friendship with the bulk of the toddlers in the neighborhood as well, well, all except for one, as I overheard the conversation the other toddlers started to have with one another from my hiding place.

"If there's one thing I can't stand, is babies who say mean things about other babies." Said Dil.

"Well you don't gots to worry Dilly, Zack can't hurt us no more. Now, let's play." Said Tommy.

"I agree Dil, Zack should have just, kept his mouth shut." Said Lil in a very loud tone of voice.

"And if Zack keeps that up, he'll never have any friends when he's biggerer." Said Dil.

"I agree." Added Phil.

As I overheard all of this going on from my hiding place, sadly, I realized they were all right. I'd consider apologizing to Tommy eventually, but I was still too angry at that moment to make any kind of coherent apology that would mean much of anything. So for the next few days, seeing I was left in the care of Tommy and Dil's parents while my aunty went to work, I more or less, kept to myself, playing on the opposite side of the room with whatever toys my aunty sent with me to play with at Tommy and Dil's house, while the other toddlers, played their little baby games together. One day though, I was playing by myself, when a hand gently touched my shoulder. I looked up from where I was playing, to see that Kimi had come up behind me.

"You know Zack, I really don't think it was fair what Tommy did. I mean, I can understand him not letting you play in his sandbox for a little while, but forever? Come on!" Said Kimi.

"I agree with you Kimi." I said, as Kimi took a seat next to me on the living room floor, and we started building with blocks together.

"You know you're always welcome to play in the sandbox at me and Chuckie's place." Said Kimi.

"Thanks." I said, blushing a smile in her direction.

At least I still had one friend, for now, little did I know that too, was about to change, once I learned how Tommy really felt about me, to the point that he'd ditch his other friends who decided to take my side of things. Kimi and I played together for a good while, and within that time of us playing together, from what I overheard the growed ups saying, Tommy's mommy found a new bag of regular sand in the garage, at which time, she cleaned up the catlitter in the sandbox out back, and replaced it with some real sand, after seeing pictures taken at open house at Angelica's preschool. Sure enough, the room was nearly covered in those colorful glass sand bottles, meaning the sand that once occupied our sandbox, was indeed, taken by Angelica, and turned into Miss Weamer's art project for the class. It was on the day when the sandbox was made back to normen when it all happened. I was quietly playing with my Super Why action figures, when I overheard this conversation from over in the sandbox. While playing with my toy, I was thinking about possibly apologizing to Tommy, that is, until I overheard the following.

"You know Tommy, now that your sandbox is all fixed, I was thinking of inviting Zack to play with us again." Said Kimi.

"Sure you can invite Zack to play, just as long as you know that if you do get him to come play with us, you'll never be playing with us or our toys, ever again." Said Tommy.

A huge lump settled in my throat. I could understand Tommy never letting me play in his sandbox again after what I did, as I did a pretty rotton thing, but what I overheard just now only made me hate him even more, as I now knew what he thought of me as a person. He hated me with all of his might, and for all I could care, he'd be happy seeing me dead, if he was going to go as far as to stop being friends with Kimi, because she chose to play with me. I also heard from Kimi later that day as well as a rehashing of the conversation she had with Tommy that I had overheard earlier, that Tommy threw away the fold up telescope I had given to him for his birthday, and scratched up the Sherry Berry DVD I let him borrow, to the point where it wouldn't play anymore. Now, whenever he needed comfort, he turned to Emmica, no longer wishing to listen to Sherry Berry anymore. This really left me heartbroken, as it really showed what Tommy thought of me, and, now, I also had to say goodbye to Kimi, because as far as I knew, Tommy had known Kimi, Phil, Lil, Chuckie, and obviously, his brother Dil, a lot longer than me, at least for a year in terms of his brother, and possibly longer than that with the other toddlers, while he had barely known me for roughly a month at this point. I couldn't come in between friends he had known much longer than me, so I quietly went back into the house, never to speak to those toddlers ever again, only appearing as a cammio along with the group, when left there to be watched by Stu, Didi, or even Peter.

Another week past. Peter babysat us a bunch over the course of that next week, and I continued to keep my distance from the rest of the toddlers, who met up with a new toddler who had moved to town at the park. A kid by the name of Tom Daniels. Feeling left out and neglected, not to mention, lonely, I started crying, at which point, Peter came over to me and lay a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Is something wrong Zack?" Peter asked.

I looked up from my tear streaked hands in the direction of our fourteen-year-old king and babysitter, sniffled back some tears and responded.

"No Peter, I've been really bad." I replied.

"What happened?" Peter asked.

I went on and explained to him what all went down with the sandbox situation, and how they now had more or less, replaced me with this new Tom Daniels kid, and on top of that, if Kimi invited me to play with them, Tommy would quit being friends with her, all because she invited me to play with them, who they didn't want anything to do with anymore.

"I mean, what am I going to do if Kimi invites me to play anyway?" I asked Peter.

"Maybe Tommy's afraid you're going to talk badly about his sandbox or other toys, and bash Chuckie again. You know that he's really close to Chuckie, and doesn't like people talking trash about him. You also realize that what all went down had absolutely nothing to do with you. Chuckie wasn't complaining about you, he was complaining about the situation with the sandbox. So for you to get all bent out of shape about it was just, wrong, and I hope you let this be a lesson to you. Learn to keep your mouth shut Zack, that's all I can say." Said Peter.

"Yeah, I mean, nobody else gotted banished from ever playing in Tommy's sandbox again, and it's all because they kept their mouths shut." I said with a sigh.

"Now see?" Said Peter.

I slowly nodded.

"No worries Zack, I'll always be your friend, and you know you can always come to me if something's bugging you." Said Peter, as he patted me on the head and went off to the monkey bars, where he rounded up all of the other toddlers, as it was about time for us to leave the park and head back to Tommy and Dil's house, where our parents and my aunty would be picking us up.

To my surprise, when we got back to Tommy and Dil's place, Peter made a comment to my aunty about how the other toddlers were no longer playing with me, and that's when my aunty told him I'd no longer be coming over to play anymore. The following day, I'd be heading to some place called Golden Apple Daycare, and from that day forward, I never played with those toddlers, evrer again. Would I ever consider finding them in another thirty years and apologizing for what all went down when we were little, hoping by that point, enough time would have passed, that they'd welcome me back into their lives again with open arms? I don't know. All I know is, word to the wise. If you're one to speak your mind, don't expect to keep your friends, and if you want to keep your friends, learn to keep your mouth shut.

End of Zack POV

The End

Author's Note: So now that I've told you this tragic story, which, again, was an AU, so the events of this story won't effect any future stories I produce, I only did this story to parody what happened with me recently at 98.6 The Mix, I'll explain what really happened. So back at the beginning of September, the station underwent a server crash. The manager of the station was sick, so wasn't able to see to getting the situation taken care of for a week. Meanwhile, one of the broadcasters on the station, proceeds to complain everyday on the staff list about the server being down, even though we did have a backup server to use while the main streaming server was down. Therefore, there was no reason for him to be complaining. One day in mid to late September though, I couldn't take his bitching and complaining anymore, so finally spoke up on the staff list, and threatened to fix or break the station the next month, which, I later on explained that my form of breaking the station was going to be to get everybody to leave the station. Well the manager of 98.6 The Mix had already made up his mind, and made it very clear that I would never be allowed to return to 98.6 The Mix, ever again, and that he meant it. Of course, I too, tried to set up the broadcaster who kept complaining on the staff list, by playing a file repeatedly on the air, that bashed the station, and I put in my title bar, this broadcaster's name, hoping he'd get caught, getting fired as a result. Of course, that plan backfired, because the staff saw who's IP address was connected to the encoders and the server, which was clearly mine. This not only caused several staff members at the station to turn the other cheek, but the program I brought to the station for all of the staff members to do together who were interested, known as 'The Sunday Movie Matinee,' was recently turned into 'The Audio Picture Show,' and while a couple of the broadcasters over at 98.6 The Mix are still my friend, and feel my firing was a bit unfair, even though I did deserve it, as I did try to take charge of the situation, rather than letting management deal with it in their own way, which I'll put down in a minute here which characters and things in my story represented which pieces of the real situation, but one of the broadcasters who still calls me a friend, as of yesterday when I found this out anyway at the time I'm posting this, even asked the station manager if he could feature me as a guest on his radio program, and the manager's response? "Sure you can feature DJ Celrock on your show, if you're looking to get fired." This left me in tears, and at this time, I'm simply going to avoid anybody who associates with that station, because I feel I've caused enough trouble. The manager has obviously made up his mind, thus, apologizing isn't going to get him to change his mind, and after what he told the other broadcaster about getting fired if he featured me as a guest, only makes me want to apologize even less now, because that basically proves to me what the manager thinks of me overall as a person, and this, left me royally heartbroken during the bulk of yesterday afternoon. Now you all can see why I haven't been around very much as of late, because I've been dealing with this dramatic situation on top of everything else, and I hate it when I get myself into these terrible messes. At least at their station now, their main streaming server is fixed, and they've gotten some new broadcasters, but still, I'm sick of getting involved in a community where the minute I do something stupid, I'm only taught what people really think of me, as the minute I do something stupid, everyone hates me, and never wants to have anything to do with me ever again. I thought true friends liked you for who you are, and obviously, none of those people think I'm a very nice person, if they all turn their backs on me the minute I do something stupid, thus, I don't care what anybody says. Push and pry me back into the land of Internet radio all you want, but after dealing with the headache of this drama and crap for over seven years now, I've had enough. It's time I completely put Internet radio behind me, and move on to hobbies where I'm appreciated, like Fan Fiction, granted, this story didn't just ruin my reputation out here forever. Now, to basically explain what parts of the story represented the real situation.

The sandbox represented the Internet radio station of 98.6 The Mix as a whole.

The regular sand in the sandbox represented the main streaming server.

The catlitter represented the backup streaming server.

Zack sadly, represented me.

Tommy represented Herbie Allen, the manager of 98.6 The Mix. Makes sense right? Since he is after all, the leader of the Rugrats.

Dil, his little brother, and close friend, represents 98.6 The Mix's assistant manager, Jared Rimer.

Phil and Lil represent two of the broadcasters, who made their opinions heard during The Jared Rimer Show a couple of weeks ago right after this incident happened, a Canadian couple known by the names of DJ Timothy and DJ Tiger Cub when on air.

Chuckie represents Bobby, or Bryan when not on air, who was constantly complaining on the staff list about the situation.

Chuckie's poop and poopy shorts represents the file I played on air, bashing the station, in a failed attempt to get Bobby, AKA Bryan, fired.

Angelica represents the thing that crashed the main streaming server at 98.6 The Mix.

Stu and Didi represent the technical support people at Ultra Host, the service provider responsible for providing the streaming server at the station.

Tom Daniels represents the new broadcasters who came to the station after I was fired.

The act of Tommy throwing away the birthday present that Zack had given him, and ruining a DVD he let him borrow, represents what the station did post my firing, which was getting rid of any material with my voice on it, and renaming one of the shows I came up with, that stayed with the station after I left, changing 'The Sunday Movie Matinee,' to 'The Audio Picture Show.'

Peter represents my mom, who was the voice of reason yesterday afternoon, when I finally confided in her about the whole thing, after the last straw hit with the whole featuring me as a guest incident, possibly getting Hunter Parker fired, if he did such a thing on his show.

And last but not least, Kimi represents Hunter Parker, one of the few broadcasters over at the station who's still on my side, yet though, is about to be treated very unfairly by Herbie, if he puts me on his show, just as how Tommy was treating Kimi, not letting her play with them anymore if she invited Zack to play with the group.

Sorry to end a story on such a tragic note, but now that I've gotten this off my chest, I can finally move on from this incident, and I can assure you, the next story, and any stories from here on out, will return to the usual universe I post to, where Zack is everybody's friend, I've just, had this on my mind for a while, and wanted to give you guys an idea as to what I had been going through as of late, and why I hadn't been around much. I hope this doesn't make those of you who read this far hate me as a person, because out here, I feel for the most part, my nice side has shown, and deep down, I really am, a very nice person, just as long as my buttons aren't pushed. So far though, nobody out here has managed to push my buttons, and if anybody has, I've more or less, blocked them and moved on, not letting it get me down. With that comment out of the way, I thank you for reading, and hopefully, I'll be back with more stories, very soon.


End file.
